How to do DNS through a proxy in Firefox?

Question

I am using Firefox 3.5.7 with FoxyProxy. I have an ssh tunnel forwarding 8080 through to an HTTP proxy server on the other end. With FoxyProxy, I send work traffic direct but everything else goes through the proxy server. DNS lookups, though, still go to work's DNS servers for resolution. Is there an add-on that can funnel certain DNS traffic to the OS but shove everything else through my ssh tunnel? It's a long shot, but it never hurts to ask....

Answer 1

1. In firefox type this in your address bar:

   about:config

2. Click that you promise to be careful.

3. In the filter textbox, type: proxy

4. Find the preference name called *network.proxy.socks_remote_dns*. Double click it to set it to true.

Firefox will now do proxy DNS requests instead of trying to resolve locally.

Answer 2

Configure your ssh client to do Dynamic forwarding (-D flag on the openssh client) so that it acts like a SOCKS server. Then you can do remote DNS lookups via SOCKS. A straight up HTTP proxy doesn't support what you want.

FoxyProxy has info on how to do what you want with SOCKS. Privoxy is another good option, too.